It's been a year......

A little over twelve months has passed since I lasted posted an article, a sorry effort for a writer. I have a few good reasons, which I won’t go into, suffice to say it has been a challenging time over the last few years, with the last year something that has stretched me further than I thought I could reach.

I use the word reasons rather than excuse as whilst excuse might be an accurate word, it is for me all a bit “glass half empty”, I have had a lot on and have not wanted to make excuses, so for me reason is a better word than excuse. A subtle difference perhaps but a powerful one none the less.

Despite the lack of posts, I have not been idle, indeed a project I began in the Spring of 2017 is finally coming towards a launch. The R Word, “time to retire retirement” is a short book I published early this year, since then it has taken on a somewhat different look to the one I envisaged twelve months ago. I will keep the details to myself for now. What I wanted to focus on was the core idea that gave rise to the book.

The events in my personal life especially have strengthened my view that retirement per se is a very silly idea. Quite aside from the concept of retirement being born in the 19th Century (no this is not a typo), when inventions such as the typewriter were patented, human beings were not designed to sit around and do nothing. Playing golf and gardening are all well and good, but there is only so much of each that a person can do.

Whilst it is ludicrous to assume we can continue to work at the same pace in our seventies as we did in our thirties, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that continuing to have meaning and purpose in our lives can result in greater life expectancy and in turn this can lead to us being able to live longer in better health. I am not suggesting people should abandon plans to save for later life or retirement, but rather our financial plans must have clearer focus, that is to say, financial plans should be aimed at specifically to the way we want to lead our later lives. This is in sharp contrast to simply targeting a plan to produce income at an arbitrary age set by a politician or your employer. Politicians who for reasons only they can explain (or maybe it really is just for the votes?) insist on simply revising and fiddling with a concept now 129 years of age rather than considering a more useful way to encourage society to live a more fulfilling life beyond the traditional age at which we cease full time employment. Of course, we are unlikely to have a politician with the courage to seek to change the way society views retirement, after all many in society like the sound of retirement, especially if they have been or are engaged in hard labour or stressful and incredibly difficult roles, roles from which any rational person would want to seek to step away at some point. So, it is easier for politicians to focus on and talk about retiring. After all putting your feet up and enjoying long holidays are appealing sentiments. What they are not however is an effective way to live healthily in later life. Now we can all probably cite examples of people who retired early and lived to be one hundred years of age only slowing down the day before they died, but they are the exception rather than the rule, genetic celebrities if you like.   

I have much anecdotal evidence from my time as a financial planner that continuing to engage in the world around us is a great way to stay mentally and physically well in later life. More recently I have been delving into research and hard evidence to support this. National Geographic first coined the term Blue Zones in 2005, the term is used to describe those areas of the world where people live the longest. What is also common to these places is the extent to which people also remain healthier longer. There are a few reasons, too much for this short piece, one however that has been mentioned frequently in the UK in recent times is a Mediterranean diet. Other common factors are that people tend to remain engaged and take regular exercise. My own experience working with many self-made people is they never actually stop work, certainly they slow down and do less, but they continue to remain mentally active and involved.

Would it not make more sense to consider later life in a more positive way than using a term used to describe things heading for the scrap heap?